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Best Software for Letting Agents After the Renters' Rights Act: How to Evaluate the Options
No single product covers every obligation. Agency software after the Renters' Rights Act splits into four layers: agency management, maintenance and contractor workflow, client accounting, and compliance evidence. Evaluate each against the specific obligations the Act created, particularly date tracking, proof of service, and producing records on demand.
This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Letting agents should seek independent legal advice for their specific circumstances. It describes the position in England. LLCR publishes this article and operates in one of the four layers described below.
What the Act actually changed about software
Before 1 May 2026, an agency could run a compliant book on a spreadsheet and a shared drive, because the highest consequence route out of a tenancy did not require the agency to prove much. Section 21 required a valid notice and a compliant file, and the court's role was largely administrative.
That route is gone. Possession now runs entirely through Section 8, which means every claim is decided on evidence, and several of the Act's new duties operate on fixed clocks that start when a tenant does something rather than when the agency does. A system either enforces those clocks or it does not.
The question to ask of any product is therefore narrower than "is it good software". It is: which of the obligations below does it actually track, and can it produce the record on demand?
The obligations that now depend on a system
| Obligation | What it requires | What software has to do |
|---|---|---|
| Possession under Section 8 | Ground proved on evidence, arrears threshold met at notice and hearing date | Rent ledger from the start of the tenancy, reconciling to the bank record, exportable |
| Written statement of terms | Prescribed information provided within 28 days of the tenancy coming into existence, penalty up to £7,000 | Record the tenancy start date, the document issued, and the date it was served |
| Pet requests (s.11 RRA) | Written response within 28 days of a formal written request, with reasons if refused | Log the request date, run the clock, hold the reasoning |
| Rental bidding (s.56 RRA) | Property advertised at a stated rent; offers above it must not be invited, encouraged or accepted. Penalty up to £7,000 | Control the advertised figure across portals and record offers received |
| Rental discrimination (ss.33 to 34 RRA) | No discrimination against prospective tenants with children or on benefits. Penalty up to £7,000 | Auditable applicant handling, consistent criteria, retained records |
| Rent increases | Once a year, via the revised section 13 procedure, at least two months' notice, challengeable at tribunal | Generate the correct notice, hold the service evidence, track the effective date |
| Rent in advance | No rent accepted before the agreement is signed; no more than one month required thereafter for new tenancies | Enforce it at the point of collection, not by policy memo |
| Deposit compliance | Court's power to make a possession order conditioned on deposit compliance | Scheme, protection date and prescribed information service date held per tenancy |
| Certificates and service | Gas, EICR, EPC and alarms, each with its own renewal cycle and its own service deadline | Two dates per document: obtained and served |
| Repairs and hazards | Council investigatory powers expanded from 27 December 2025; improvement notice breach penalty up to £40,000 | Dated log of every report and every response |
Note the pattern in the right hand column. Almost every entry is a date, a deadline, or a record of service. That is what changed. The Act did not mainly add new documents to produce; it added dates that have to be provable.
The four layers of the stack
Agencies are frequently sold a single product as though it covers everything, and then discover a gap at the point it matters. It is more useful to think in layers and to know which layer each product actually occupies.
Layer 1: agency management. The core CRM and property management platform. Applicants, viewings, tenancies, rent demands, statements, landlord and tenant portals. This is the system the agency lives in day to day, and most agencies already have one.
Layer 2: maintenance and contractor workflow. Repair reporting, job dispatch, contractor management, work order tracking. Some agency platforms include this; others integrate with a specialist product.
Layer 3: client accounting. The client account, client ledgers, reconciliation and reporting. This has its own regulatory weight, because scheme rules require members to keep records and accounts showing all dealings with client money and to hold it in an FCA authorised client account. The client money obligations are more prescriptive than most agencies realise.
Layer 4: compliance evidence. Certificate status and renewal tracking, service dates, the dated record of what was in place when, and the ability to produce that record for a council, a court, a redress scheme or a landlord client.
Layers 1 to 3 are mature markets with established products. Layer 4 is the one that changed character on 1 May 2026, because the record stopped being an internal admin convenience and became the thing a possession claim, a redress complaint or a council request is decided on.
The questions to put to any vendor
Evaluation goes better when the questions are specific enough that a demo cannot answer them with a dashboard.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Does the system record two dates per compliance document, obtained and served? | Holding a certificate evidences half the obligation. The service date is the other half |
| Can it produce a per property compliance record as a single document, without manual assembly? | This is what a council officer or a landlord client actually asks for |
| Does it enforce deadlines, or only display them? | A dashboard that shows a red flag nobody opens is not a control |
| Can the record be shown to be contemporaneous? | Section 4 of the Civil Evidence Act 1995 directs courts to weigh evidence partly by whether it was made at the time |
| Does the audit trail survive staff turnover? | Records held per negotiator disappear with the negotiator |
| Are permissions role based? | Agencies need staff to add records without being able to alter history |
| What happens on export or exit? | Data portability at the point of switching, and run-off access to historic records |
| Is scope stated honestly? | A vendor claiming to cover every layer is usually thin in at least one |
The last one is worth dwelling on. No product in this market covers all four layers well. A vendor that says so plainly is easier to plan around than one that does not.
Where LLCR fits, stated plainly
LLCR operates in layer 4 only. It is a compliance evidence platform, and it is designed to sit alongside an agency management platform rather than to replace one. It does not do CRM, viewings, rent collection or client accounting, and an agency evaluating it as a replacement for Reapit, Alto, Arthur or similar is evaluating the wrong thing.
What it holds is the compliance position per property: certificate status with expiry alerts, the obtained and served date for each document, an issue register recording what was reported and when, and a compliance score across a portfolio. The Agency plan adds team access with role based permissions, so the record sits with the property rather than with whoever set the tenancy up. Records can be exported as a single per property document for a council request, a landlord client or a claim.
None of that guarantees compliance, and no software can. What it is designed to do is make the position visible before a deadline passes and produce the dated record afterwards.
Three claims to treat carefully
Vendor language in this market has moved faster than vendor capability. Three claims are worth testing.
"Fully RRA compliant." Software cannot be compliant; a landlord or agency can be. Ask which specific obligations the product tracks and how, and compare that against the table above.
"PRS Database ready." The database sits in Part 2, Chapter 3 of the Act and is not yet live, with a phased rollout expected and final requirements still to be confirmed. A product can reasonably say it is preparing to support registration. A product claiming to be integrated with something that does not yet exist is describing an intention.
"Court ready" or "guaranteed." A system can hold a record and export it. Whether a claim succeeds depends on the facts, the drafting, the ground and the judge. Any vendor promising an outcome in litigation is making a claim it cannot stand behind.
A practical order of work
For an agency reviewing its stack, the sequence that tends to produce the most improvement for the least disruption is:
- Establish which layer each existing product actually occupies, rather than which layer it is marketed as covering.
- Run the obligations table above against what is currently tracked, and mark each row as tracked, partly tracked or not tracked.
- Fix service dates first, because it is the most common gap and the cheapest to close.
- Only then consider whether the gap is best filled by extending an existing product or adding a layer.
Most agencies find the gap is not where they expected. The certificates are usually in hand. The evidence of when the tenant received them usually is not. The onboarding audit applies the same test to a single incoming instruction.
Frequently asked questions
What software do letting agents need after the Renters' Rights Act?
Most agencies need coverage across four layers rather than a single product: an agency management platform for applicants, tenancies and rent; a maintenance and contractor workflow; client accounting that meets client money scheme requirements; and a compliance evidence layer that tracks certificate status, service dates and the record of what was in place when. The Act mainly added dates that have to be provable rather than documents to produce, so the practical test for any product is whether it records both the obtained date and the served date for each compliance document, and whether it can produce that record on demand.
Can property management software make an agency compliant with the Renters' Rights Act?
No product can make an agency compliant, because compliance is a state of the agency's conduct rather than a feature of a system. What software can do is track deadlines, hold records, enforce process and produce evidence, which reduces the chance of a breach and improves the position if one is alleged. Claims such as "fully RRA compliant" are worth testing against specifics: which obligations does the product track, does it enforce deadlines or only display them, and can it produce a per property record without manual assembly.
Is any software integrated with the PRS Database yet?
The private rented sector database sits in Part 2, Chapter 3 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and is not yet live, with a phased rollout expected and final requirements still to be confirmed in secondary legislation. Civil penalties for database breaches are set at up to £7,000, rising to up to £40,000 for offences. A product can reasonably describe itself as exploring or preparing to support registration once the requirements are settled. A claim of existing integration with a system that has not launched should be treated as a statement of intent rather than of capability.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. LLCR is a compliance management platform, not a law firm. For advice specific to your situation, consult a qualified solicitor.